Tag Archives: SHARE Consortium

Horizontal handrail the full width of the door on the inside. Internal bolt. Credit: WaterAid/Stephen Sagawa

WaterAid has published a compendium of low-cost technologies to improve the accessibility of household WASH facilities for the disabled and elderly in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. There are sections on reaching facilities, latrines, bathing, waterpoints and handwashing. It can be used by staff such as health workers and community volunteers.

WeCan Campaign poster used in an IDP camp in Batticoloa, Sri Lanka to help respond to and prevent violence against women

Poorly designed and located water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions can increase people’s vulnerability to violence. This can range from sexual harassment when practicing open defecation or collecting water, to staff demanding sexual favours in exchange for access to WASH facilities.<

With this in mind, WaterAid/SHARE have published a toolkit [1] to help practitioners make water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) safer for the most vulnerable.

The toolkit consists of briefing notes, a checklist of actions based on the ten key principles for reducing vulnerability to WASH-related violence, and a range of tools including case studies of good practice. It is relevant for both humanitarian and development contexts. The materials also include videos, scenarios for training and tools for use with communities, key extracts from international human rights instruments and a folder of additional supporting information

Any actor working in humanitarian, development or transitional contexts can request free access to the materials by sending an email to gbv@wateraid.org.

SHARE-funded research [1] has found that Moringa oleifera, a common plant in many tropical and subtropical countries, can be an effective handwashing product if used in the correct concentration. Laboratory tests show that the plant has antibacterial activity against different pathogen, but its potential effect as a hand washing product had not been studied before.

By testing the effect of Moringa oleifera leaf powder on hands artificially contaminated with E. coli and comparing this to the effect of non-medicated liquid soap, the researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and SBI Consulting Ltd in Mozambique found that four grams of Moringa oleifera powder had the same effect as non-medicated soap when used for hand washing.

The next step will be to try this product in real conditions and study its acceptability and convenience for potential users.

To take part in a discussion on the use of Moringa as soap visit the SuSanA Forum.

SHARE stands for Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity, and is a five year initiative (2010-2015) funded by the UK Department for International Development

UK Under Secretary of State for International Development Lynne Featherstone visiting SHARE-funded Undoing Inequity programme in Uganda. Photo: SHARE/WaterAid

WaterAid is currently carrying out a SHARE-funded action research project in Zambia and Uganda in collaboration with WEDC and the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre (LCD), called Undoing Inequity: water, sanitation and hygiene programmes that deliver for all. The project aims to generate rigorous evidence about how a lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) impacts on the lives of disabled, older persons and people living with a chronic illness; understand the barriers they face, develop and test an inclusive WASH approach to address those barriers and influence key policy and decision makers to mainstream inclusive WASH within development.

As part of this project, Hazel Jones (WEDC) has written a report titled Mainstreaming disability and ageing in water, sanitation and hygiene programmes. This report recognises that progress on the MDGs is not happening in an equitable way. A drive for increasing coverage of basic services, such as WASH has meant that people who are ‘harder to reach’, such as disabled and older people often remain un-served.

WaterAid is creating a practitioner’s best practice resource to help reduce gender based violence (GBV) related to sanitation, hygiene and water (WASH) in development, humanitarian and transitional contexts. The team is interested to be in contact with any organisation or individual who has material or experience to contribute to the resource; and/or may be interested to co-publish the outputs. The research is being funded by the SHARE Consortium.

The research team are keen to hear from anyone who is interested to contribute to the resource by:

Identifying what information / elements would be particularly useful to your organisation

Sharing case studies of GBV and WASH; from experience, or from existing documentation

Sharing examples of good practice on programming in relation to GBV and WASH, or examples of programming from other sectors and GBV which could be transferrable to WASH programming or the training of sector professionals

Sharing good practice on ways to respond to incidences of GBV in low-income contexts, including any examples of processes where WASH professionals have engaged with protection or GBV professionals

To contribute to the research, for further information or to receive the final outputs of the research please contact (copying in both email addresses):

In the scramble for attention in post-2015 development agenda discussions, WaterAid and the SHARE programme are highlighting the role of WASH in combating malnutrition. “A successful global effort to tackle under-nutrition must include WASH” is the headline in their new briefing note.

Mentioned in the note, and of special interest, is the forthcoming Cochrane review on “Interventions to improve water quality and supply, sanitation and hygiene practices, and their effects on the nutritional status of children” (DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD009382).

In the wake of the WaterAid/SHARE briefing note, a new World Bank report on sanitation and stunting [1] is “getting a lot of attention from our nutrition colleagues”, says Eddy Perez of the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in an email.

The focus of forum is the Public Health Promotion (PHP) aspect of water and sanitation programmes. Presentations on this theme address topics such as new technologies and hygiene promotion, menstrual hygiene management, metrics for assessing the impact of hygiene promotion activities and Community Led Total Sanitation in the emergency environment.

The forum is convened by the SHARE Research Consortium and sponsored by Oxfam, IFRC, ICRC, International Rescue Committee, ACF, MSF and UNICEF.

The forum, which is being held on 17-18 December will be followed by a separate one day event on 19 December organised by the Hygiene Promotion Forum on hand washing. Participants will share examples of hardware solutions used in the field for hand washing and best practices on promotion and social marketing.

Composting is commonly used as an effective means of stabilizing wastewater biosolids and reducing pathogens to very low concentrations. However, it has been shown that under certain conditions Salmonella can regrow in previously composted biosolids. Growth of seeded Salmonella typhimurium in composted biosolids ranging from two weeks to two years maturity w […]

Hi Joe, What studies did you read? Why would anyone expect the finished ''biosolids'' (which are almost indistinguishable from soil) to become sterile? What would pathogenic microbes adapted to living in water without oxygen in our guts have to do in a pile of dry soil? Plus it is obvious that if there is new fecal contamination, the prev […]

We're happy to announce our new seminars to you: Attention! Please note that all the following seminars will be conducted in German only! San ABC plus The next Seminar is an advanced training which aims to deepen the knowledge of the participants on sustainable sanitation in the context of development cooperation. The training will take place Aachen fro […]

Dear Penny, Thanks a lot for the information. Of course it would be interesting for us to know the activities that were carried out to monitor safety. My only issue is the long term (health) effects that lack of water and hand washing can have on the girls. I don't know how other organisations/NGOs that are promoting cups in low income areas and schools […]

The Africa APPG together with Polygeia seeks to explore the lessons from the Ebola crisis for community-led health systems strengthening through examining the current response to the Ebola crisis, and gathering evidence from experts and the affected communities in West Africa.

Communities declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) through Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) did not experience any case of the Ebola outbreak, despite other surrounding communities in Marbibi county that experienced the worst cases.

The CLTS Knowledge Hub is hosting a webinar on Participatory Design Development for Sanitation on Thursday 26th March 2015 at 10am GMT. Ben Cole will be discussing his experiences in applying participatory design to accompany and extend Malawi’s national CLTS program since 2012